


Depths

by context_please



Series: A Million Little Pieces - Drabbles for Macx's Pushing Boundaries Series [1]
Category: Jurassic Park (Movies), Jurassic World (2015)
Genre: Character Study, Fluff, Gen, I like original characters shut up, Owen Grady is badass, This is a tribute, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 06:50:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4294818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/context_please/pseuds/context_please
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nancy Hisada loves her job.</p><p>Or: how Nancy came to realise some very important things after Jurassic World's destruction.</p><p>A drabble for Macx's Tainted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Depths

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Macx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macx/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Tainted](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3381008) by [Macx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macx/pseuds/Macx). 



> Nancy is Macx's wonderful OC, who I'm just having a little fun with. 
> 
> If you haven't read Tainted, you are doing yourself a serious injustice. Seriously, go read it.
> 
> Dialogue in the second scene comes entirely from Tainted, but the words in between are mine. Thanks for letting me play, Macx!

Nancy Hisada loves her job.

She doesn’t realize this when she first began, or when the mosa’s presence first brushes against her, ten thousand times stronger than a great white shark and a million times bigger. She didn’t realize when she saw little kids and adults alike laughing in delight at her first show. No.

It’s when she’s on the phone, her mother’s voice frantic and tearful in her ear, the bustle of bleeding tourists muffling the sound.

‘You can’t go back, Nancy,’ her mother orders, voice low. Just like she remembers it.

She can picture her mother sitting at the dining table, delicate hands betraying enough strength to raise five children and still hold a margarita rock steady. She would be twisting one of them around her other forearm now, sitting worryingly still, her chin wobbling dangerously in counterpoint. But her dark eyes would be steady, even if her voice isn’t.

‘You could have died, baby,’ her mother says, the wavering of her throat in no way effecting her resolve. ‘Come home.’ The worry lurks in her tone. She’s scared Nancy might lose herself.

‘No, mama,’ Nancy protests.

It hits her then. She loves her job. And she’s not going to leave just because the genetics lab screwed up. No matter what happens, she’ll always return to Isla Nublar. All of her friends are there. Her life is there. The mosa is there.

It’s surprising how important that is.

For the first time in her life, Nancy stands up. Mama had always been in control of her children, always told them what to do and who to be with. One memorable time, she’d kicked Ben’s girlfriend out of the house. Nancy’s oldest brother was not happy with that. And Nancy hasn’t seen her younger sister after she tried to bring her first girlfriend home. Nancy still kind of hates her mother for that.

Now she’s sick of her mother controlling everything. Ben once told her she would be a real grown up when she snubbed their mother. She finally understands what he meant.

‘Mama, I love you, but I’m not staying at home. My job here is important.’

‘Nancy Hisada! You listen to me –‘

‘Mother!’ Nancy snaps, annoyed. A woman with dried blood running down the side of her face gives her the stink eye.

‘Mother,’ she tries again, quieter. ‘I love this job. I’ll come visit you, but when they ask me to return, I will.’ Nancy sighs, puts her foot down and keeps it there. ‘Don’t try to stop me, mama.’

Silence reigns. The cries of nearby children ring sharply in her ears.

‘Okay, Nancy,’ mama says, tone defeated. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’

She doesn’t. But she’s never going to tell her mother that.

 

 

 

Jurassic World may be high-risk, dangerous, and frankly crazy…

Yet somehow she feels safe.

With the empty stores all around her, Jurassic World is silent. It’s beyond strange. She’s so used to the murmur of tourists providing a backing track to her life, then the screams of terrified people filled that void. Now it’s just quiet, only the calls of dinosaurs drifting faintly to her ears. She’s not sure if she likes the quiet.

It does have some advantages, though. As she sits at the edge of the lagoon, the mosasaurus’ low rumbles are a comfort. Without the usual outside noise, Nancy can hear her loud and clear. She alternates between low rumbles and higher rolling whines. Her mind is huge. She’s as vast as the ocean, and just as mysterious. Nancy’s known her since the moment she hatched, watched her grow up. Felt as the mosa’s mind grew and grew in size, until it was too vast to comprehend. The mosa is like outer space: unknown, a little terrifying, and stunningly beautiful.

All morning the mosa hung around, vocalizing gently at her. Nancy usually likes to meditate, but she’s too wound up. Emotions tumble over and over in her mind – confusion, contentment, safety, panic, worry. She’s crazy, coming back here. She feels safe in a place people _died_.

The mosa whines loudly at her, vague puzzlement bubbling to the surface of their tenuous bond. Nancy smiles at her, instantly feeling a little better. If there’s one thing she doesn’t doubt, it’s that she loves this beautiful creature. Nancy would never swim with her – unlike Owen Grady, she knows she’ll lose herself if she bonds like he has. The mosa’s presence is so vast Nancy must seem like a life raft, fragile but afloat. And even though she hasn’t touched the mosa in years, not since she was a tiny hatchling, they _do_ share a bond, and it’s not meaningless.

Speaking of the devil. Owen comes up beside her, silent as usual, simply watching the mosa roll over lazily.

And she doesn’t know why she tells him, doesn’t know why it’s suddenly okay to share a secret she’s kept her entire life. ‘She’s here for me,’ she says – murmurs, really. Her heart rate kicks into overdrive, but she pushes it down. She’s seen Owen and his girls. The Raptor Squad. He’s so deep into the bond he can never look back. She doesn’t know how he manages to stay here, stay present, and yet he does. Owen spends his days immersed in the bond, and then he comes around sometimes to have dinner with Nancy, with his friends. It’s so far removed from what Ben said their mother taught him that she doesn’t know what to do. She does know one thing: she can trust him. He stands to lose as much as she does, if the world found out.

Nancy can’t say it, but she tells him with her eyes. She doesn’t know how to say it. She never has.

He nods, and that seems to shake the words from her.

‘I never asked, but I knew you had to be like me. Like us,’ she says, cautious. ‘No one could do what you did without more than just a little bit of talent. I have this little bit. It was never enough to really touch her. I feel her moods sometimes. I can feel her coming here, her hunger, or when she is full. That’s it.’

It’s a little more than that, but she can’t bring herself to tell him.

‘Us?’ he blinks, confused.

He doesn’t realize how obvious he is sometimes. How his girls move to obey his commands before he speaks; how Blue has never tried to challenge his position; how he moves so smoothly, like a raptor; how he anticipates their needs. Really, it’s the most obvious in the way he touches them, casual and assured, so confident that they will never hurt him.

She doesn’t tell him any of this, merely chuckles. ‘Reggie, over at the Cretaceous Cruise,’ she tells him. Reggie loves the Apatosaurus, can’t get enough of them. ‘He’s a big guy kinda guy. He loves those giant beasts. When he sees an apatosaurus, he’s a goner. They could step on him and never even notice, but he calls them his girls. Like you. When that… thing… killed one of the young ones, it almost broke him. And there’s Jarrod. He’s handling the micros. I know some of the stable hands have basic talent. Rather weak and unspecified, but enough to keep the babies calm and even-tempered.’ The thought of them lifts Nancy’s spirit, puts a genuine smile on her face.

Owen stays silent. Nancy is certain he doesn’t know about the others. They have somehow come together, found each other.

Just like Owen found his girls.

Nancy turns back to her charge, feeling more at peace with herself than she can ever remember. The mosa picks up on her mood, holds a fin out of the water as the glides past.

‘You went deep with them right?’

She doesn’t really expect an answer. It’s insane, completely unheard of. She understands how difficult it is to vocalize the bond.

Nancy tries anyway. ‘I never dared to open up to her,’ she confesses. And she won’t – with her meager helping of talent she’d be swept away like a leaf in a squall. ‘She’s such a powerful presence, especially when she’s hungry. I’d get lost. Forever. You didn’t.’

‘No,’ he finally answers, so slowly she wonders whether it’s a question.

And she asks what she’s always wanted to. ‘How?’

She looks Owen Grady in the eye, sees his hesitance, his uncertainty. ‘I don’t really know.’

And that’s okay. None of them know, really.

 

 

 

 

Monday mornings help. Nancy is terrified to go deeper – she knows she’ll lose herself – but she’s curious too. Meditating helps focus her, gives her a doorway into the bond, into the mosa’s mind. Nancy can feel the vastness of her, the hunger simmering beneath the surface. The sharpness of her predatory instinct is mitigated by the endless horizon of her mind. She imagines the raptors would be all razor-sharp intelligence and finely-tuned danger. The mosa’s mind is like swimming with stingrays – they have the capacity to hurt but chose to spend their time gliding peacefully under the rays of the sun. This morning, the mosasaurus is a little more present, watchful.

Nancy opens her eyes as she comes closer. Calls, ‘hello, gorgeous!’

The mosa calls back, whining high and pleased in her massive throat. She swims closer to the platform; opens her massive jaws, begging for food. Nancy tells her, ‘later.’ She’s relaxed, content, as she watches her charge.

The mosa swims closer again, turning at the last second to scrape her underbelly against the metal barrier. Her huge flipper slaps against the side of the platform, sending water dumping over Nancy in a sudden rush of cold.

The playfulness floats up to Nancy from some distant part of the mosa’s mind, and she just laughs, soaking wet on a Monday morning and grinning like a loon.

A thermos appears in her field of vision and she takes it, still laughing. The mosa’s satisfied, likes the sound of Nancy’s laughter. She finds it interesting.

Nancy takes the croissant Owen offers as he sits down beside her. She asks him about the pack, like she always does, and listens to their latest antics. He really is the alpha, in every sense of the word.

Nancy will never have the kind of bond he will, but if she can have a fraction of it, that’s enough.

The mosa rolls slowly. Keens high the way she only does for Nancy.

Defying her mother was worth it, for this.

**Author's Note:**

> I finished writing this right before chapter 7 of Threshold Shift came out... I'm starting to wonder whether I'm psychic.


End file.
